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Kate Small

Humanities

education

BA, English, University of Massachusetts
BA, Piano Performance, New England Conservatory of Music
MA, History of Art, University of California, Berkeley
MFA, Writing, San Francisco State University

Let me teach like a Steinway dangling from the neck of a mover’s crane. So almost-falling, so on the edge of losing everything. -Taylor Mali

Kate is happiest when listening to her students thinking out loud in their humanities classes. Kate had been teaching in colleges for several years when serendipity landed her in a summer literacy project at a local middle school. Kate discovered that adolescents are her people: curious, demanding, honest, and really funny. This phenomenon is only amplified by the magic that is Spring Street, where Kate’s students provide her with rigorous daily training in the search for metaphors that illuminate the intersections between literature and history. Even though Kate has been a teacher for twenty-five years, Spring Street keeps her close to the beginning, and hope.

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One time in class, I cried about the injustice of being dyslexic in this world. My teacher told me that she was going to make me a writer. She told me to pace around her classroom and talk to her about all the things I wished I was able to write over the years. She put the power back in my hands to be able to articulate myself using words, and I had gone my whole life without ever experiencing that.

Georgia

Alumna, Class of 2019